Beninese organic farm bids to weed out Africa’s social ills

The farm founded by a priest to fight poverty and famine has grown into a pilot project for the continent that tackles its problems by teaching farmers to maximize yields and promote farming among youths

By Cecile De Comarmond / AFP, PORTO-NOVO

A woman waters plants at the Songhai Center, an organic farm in the Beninese capital of Porto-Novo on Jan. 30.

Photo: AFP

With his pilgrim’s staff and Panama hat, Father Godfrey Nzamujo nips up and down the paths of the Songhai Center, the organic farm he created in Benin nearly 30 years ago to fight poverty and rural migration in Africa.

The small farm barely covered a hectare when it was set up in the Beninese capital of Porto-Novo in 1985, but has since become a pilot project for the rest of a continent badly in need of new ideas to maximize crop yields.

The farm’s center now stretches over 24 hectares and employs an army of workers and apprentices, who toil from sunrise to sunset growing fruit, vegetables and rice, as well as rearing fish, pigs, poultry.

In accordance with Nzamujo’s principle, “nothing is wasted, everything is transformed,” on the farm, with even chicken droppings turned into bio-gas that powers the center’s kitchens.

Though it is housed in the tiny West African nation, Songhai has big plans for the rest of the continent. It already has similar operations in Nigeria, Liberia and Sierra Leone and wants to set up shop in 13 more western and central countries.

Nzamujo’s raison d’etre is how to help Africans increase yields through simple techniques, without using pesticides or fertilizers, while cutting production costs and protecting the environment.

The Nigeria-born priest, who was raised in California, said he was shocked by the appalling images of famine in Africa broadcast on TV in the early 1980s.

He left to discover the continent and see how he could put his university training in agronomics, economics and information technology to good use and fight against poverty on his own terms.

After visiting several countries, he ended up in Benin, where the then-Marxist government gave him a small plot of land.